Cézanne picked up the pasteboard in the hall and took me to his

motif. It was two kilometers away with a view over a valley at the

foot of Sainte-Victoire, the rugged mountain which he continually

painted in watercolor and in oils and which he greatly admired.

Memories of Paul CézanneEmile Bernard

I am also going to my motif, into my dreams.Jindřich Štyrský

1. Portrait of My Sister Marie, 1941: charcoal on paper, 55 x 38 cm

As a child I caught a glimpse of a magazine’s color supplement displaying the

image of a woman’s head, exquisite with golden hair, whose pale hue will always

suggest azure to me. Her lips, red from the lipstick, looked like a moist abyss,

though silent, parted, and mute. Eyes of violet — in them pride, sin, and

weakness — blazed in a pallid face. The head was perverse, and yet full of

compassion, damned, yet full of kindness. It was the head of Medusa. In a pool

of blood. Blood streamed from its neck , and in its hair a cluster of vipers, erect,

ready to penetrate the woman through her mouth, nose, and ears. As I paid no

attention to who had painted the picture, the artist’s name has been effaced

from my memory. But the horror depicted here has never left me. A ghastly

horror, an alluring horror. The Head of Medusa. It keeps returning in my

dreams. I tried to place this head on those closest to me at the time: my mother

and sister. The head was a perfect fit on my sister. So I was madly in love with

her. In the depths of my memories of my sister lies the memory of her death.

Her bare legs, strained by spasm, ready for the journey to the underworld. Spurs

were strapped to her feet. Those long, suspicious, perfidious legs with the ankles

of Beardsley’s women, with their chiseled calf f lesh. My sister was in rapture,

like the rapture of a water plant in moonlight. She blossomed in agony like a

succulent medium in a trance, like a large nocturnal f lower. I regret that I did

not get to know her fragrance. When remembering today, the woman appears to

me like a foal sleeping in an alpine wilderness. She certainly knew the many

ways of love. In this way I instinctively created my hallucination, my

object-phantom, on which I am fixated and to whom I dedicate this work.

J.Š.

Prague, May 1941

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Dream of Vítězslav Nezval(may 25, 1928)

. . . I’m telling Mother and Father about something that happened to me in

Paris. Father has to take a business trip to Berlin — — — I’m looking for someone

(I don’t want to say it’s Toyen) in Les Halles. I come to a house, open the door

— — narrow — — I enter the parlor — — no one — — first f loor, no one — — —

darkness — — I go upstairs, no one — — I cough — — I call out “hello” — — no one

— — when I’m on the third floor I’m overcome with terror and fly downstairs —

— no one — — A blank — — — — I don’t know — — — — — in front of the house is

a small square (the Moor Café), f lagstones, about which I say: large as a room.

Nezval’s lying in a chest, a coffin — — Backing up (I’m leaving the house with

someone) a man says: he was a fat one, he liked his booze — — Nezval is lying in

the small coffin, his legs tucked up. Someone takes a leg and breaks it off, and

then the other, and lays them down — — — the shoe soles in his armpits — — — —

— Teige somehow appears — — — before that someone, evidently the man I had

left the house with, was looking through Nezval’s pants pockets; but it isn’t

there; he finds it in his wallet. Though Nezval seems alive, he continues to lie

there, but his hands refuse to give up the wallet. Teige says we need to take it

from him, that he shouldn’t be buried with money. At this point I wake up.

42

32. The Pope of Czech Literature, 1941: collage, paper, 34 x 24 cm

43

48

x

Dream of Mother Earth(1940)

Dream of the Gypsy Woman is connected to Dream of Mother Earth

I was reading Mácha’s May before falling asleep. I was extremely tired — dozing

off —

— — — beautiful earth, beloved earth,

my cradle, my grave, my mother.

Appearing to me was that very same furrowed earth — like in Dream of the

Gypsy Woman.

39. Dream of Mother Earth I, 1940: pen and ink on paper, 29 x 41 cm

49

40. Dream of Mother Earth II, 1940: pencil and pastel on paper, 29 x 42 cm

50

xi

Dream of the Tattooed Infant(june 3, 1929)

I am with Jindřich Honzl at a dance at the Budiš Inn in Verměřovice. We’re

enjoying ourselves. There is a plot against us. We intend to secretly slip away.

At night we flee through the garden, through fields of beet and potato. In the

woods we hide in a thicket.

Honzl and I are bound to poles or to beams in the middle of a barn or a

gym. Around us in an orgy of dance are ten- to twelve-year-old tattoed boys. They are armed with sticks and make threatening gestures at us. In their

midst we also see an infant tattoed with pornographic images.

41. Dream Record, reconstructed, 1940: pencil and pastel on paper, 17.5 x 25 cm

51

42. Cluster of Grapes, 1934: collage, paper, 40 x 29 cm

53

xii

Dream of the Mandrake(1929)

44. Mandrake, 1929: pencil on paper, 26.5 x 35.5 cm

45. The Omnipresent Eye XVIII, Dream of the Mandrake, 1941: ruddle on paper, 41 x 26.5 cm

54

xiii

Dream of Father(the night of october 15-16, 1931, kremencová st., prague)

. . . I am at the farm in Čermná in what we call the front room. I am looking

for a legal document or letter in an old writing desk. I am alone in the house

and feeling totally isolated makes me uncomfortable. I am afraid, a type of fear

I used to have as a child when I had to go alone to the cellar or attic. Suddenly

the door opens and Father comes in. At this moment I feel much better.

Breathing a sigh, the sensation of suffocating leaves me. We both look for

receipts from the sale of hay. We argue, and our arguing turns into a brawl. I

see my father grow pale, his left arm raised, holding a chair over my head, ready

to club me with it. I swerve out the way and the chair misses, its momentum

carrying it to the floor. I tell myself to leave so as to bring this distasteful scene

to an end. I think: Father is already an old man. I go to the door but glance

back. I see Father standing on one leg on the backrest of a chair, his other

leg balancing in the air. He’s stiff and pale, practically white. He’s wearing a

wedding frock and over it a white gown, a blazing candle on his left shoulder.

He seems mute. His shoulders move convulsively, jerkily, as if he were racked

by sobbing. Yet the look he gives me is as vicious as it was a moment ago, and

I see in his eyes that he’d like to club me though he’s unable to do so. Suddenly,

I don’t know how, a second chair appears under his groping leg. I see him

straddle on two chair backs. They seemed to be attached to his legs, and all at

once he starts to come after me, taking strides several meters long. But he is still

stiff, and it’s not his blows I run away from, since I know he’s incapable of

hitting me, but from his apparition. It has caught me off guard, and before I

manage to run out the door it chases me around the room a few times. It occurs

55

to me that he’s been dead a long time, that what’s pursuing me is his corpse.

This doubles my horror. I run down a long hallway, across the yard, below the

stable and barn and into the fields. But Father on his monstrous stilts is still on

my heels. Under an oak the ground gives way beneath me and I sink into a

slough. When it reaches my chest I think I’m done for and in any moment the

mud will close over my head. I feel an intense hatred for my father, but am

comforted by the thought that he must drown in the mud with me. I look back

at him and cannot find him in the whole landscape. He’s vanished. I discover

that a large cork float similar to a millstone

has appeared around my neck. I feel

relieved because I know that I’m saved. I

swim. Yet I’m certain that Father hasn’t

drowned either, and I’m terrified that in

my next dream he’ll pursue me again on

those chairs.

46. Second Dream Record, 1931: pencil on paper, 24 x 13.7 cm

56

47. My Father, 1934: collage, paper, 27.5 x 23 cm

57

48. Transformation, 1937: oil on canvas, 66 x 50 cm

xvii

Dream of Jaroslav Seifert(night of july 22-23, 1934,hotel prokop, špicák na šumave)

Dusk. We’re walking through a terrifying

forest. We come to a quarry through a

tunnel. There is no exit. It is night, but

moonlit. A child whose age and sex I cannot

determine is running and jumping along the

cliff. I’m extremely worried the child will no

longer be able to walk. He howls that he’s

thirsty. He’s Jaroslav Seifert’s son. Ura brings

water in one of those square glasses country-

folk use for drinking wine. Seifert is furious.

He says young kids should always have fruit

juice mixed with their water. He catches his

kid and holds him between his knees in the

same way one holds a goose when feeding it.

With one swipe he lops off the head. Then

he comes to us, squeezing the child’s head in

his hands. I find the whole scene comical.

Seifert’s gestures remind me of a salon

magician. He shows us a wrinkled lemon.

Ura holds out the glass and tells him to give

the lemon a good squeeze. I regret that it’s

night and I cannot photograph Seifert for my

album of Czech poets.

60. Dream of Jaroslav Seifert, 1934: collage, paper, 42.5 x 22 cm

68